


Cunning Little Bastard

by Ritteranfanger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, No Romance, genre: humor, very silly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27275557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ritteranfanger/pseuds/Ritteranfanger
Summary: A simple story mostly for my own amusement about Harry going into Slytherin and showing no ambition whatsoever, leading everyone to wonder just what the hell he's doing there. The only real ideas I have at the moment are having him use the magic he learns on his essays, such as having all of the letters float off of his essay on levitation, having the words of his essay on colour changing charms change ever so slightly whenever the reader blinks, Transfiguring the letters straight into his essay paper and so on.The second thing would be to corrupt Hermione into doing it too, as a way of one-upping him. To prove that she’s really the best in their year, not just the one with the best marks.
Kudos: 12





	1. Changing Colours

Chapter One

Filius Flitwick sat in the nightly staff gossip sess-, er, meeting, not paying all that much attention. More accurately, he wasn't paying attention to the gossip s-  _ meeting _ . Before him sat a sheet of parchment, an essay in fact. A first year's essay on colour changing charms to be exact. That in and of itself wouldn't be enough to draw his attention away from the nightly meeting, however something peculiar happened with this very essay some hours previous. 

SCENE BREAK

Filius had sat down to mark the first year essays on colour changing charms, he'd been making steady progress until he stumbled across this particular essay. He'd started out by skimming over it to see if all of the relevant points were touched on; How the spell is used in the wizarding world, how it works, how the spell related to others, interesting examples of its use and so on. He didn't notice anything out of the ordinary on the first pass, though this particular student wasn't getting any marks for finding examples and the vertical space between each line was a bit larger than usual, the student made up for it by adding another couple inches of writing. 

He'd moved on to his second pass, reading a bit slower this time to see if the student had properly understood what they'd read. It seemed like a perfectly average first year essay, or at least it would if it wasn't for the fact that he could swear the ink was slowly changing from black to dark blue. The change was subtle, very subtle, he only noticed it after he'd blinked several times, but when he compared the words on the parchment to the other first year essays the ink was the same colour. 

Curious.

He moved on to grading the essay and decided it was a trick of the eye, that is until something a little more…  _ Interesting  _ happened. He'd dipped his quill in his ink pot and prepared to write an X where the student had clearly misinterpreted some information, the moment he'd drawn the first \ he stopped. The \ was blue. He was using red ink... wasn't he? A quick look into his ink pot revealed that yes, it was full of red ink. 

And curiouser. 

He set the essay aside, it was interesting and he planned to take his time to examine it thoroughly. He continued grading the others without incident, well unless he counted the essay obviously written by Miss Granger. It was so excessively full of information he could almost call it a thesis on the very essence of a colour changing charm, if she was a seventh year she may well have made it into one. He shook his head, she had an interesting thought process and made some impressive connections to the theory but he still didn't want to read the damn thing, his hand started cramping in fear just looking at the length of it.

It should be noted that Professor Flitwick created an ingenious little charm and placed it on his inbox. It had a few very helpful functions, but the most important one was that it removed the students’ names from the page and tied the essays he received directly to the magical signature of the writer. When he marked the essays the marks were automatically tallied under the correct student's name, he didn't even need to tally up the marks at the end of the year, it was all handled by his little time saver. 

He felt it also helped him reduce his biases, which was the reason he created it in the first place. Some of them could be right bastards sometimes but they deserved to be marked fairly... unless they were stupid enough to insult him in their essays. 

SCENE BREAK

At present, he was finished marking the rest of the first year essays and he’d brought the interesting one with him to the staff room. The gossi-,  _ meet- _ , oh screw it,  _ gossip session, _ was starting soon and he'd keep half an ear on it to keep abreast of anything important. He made his way to his favorite chair and levitated himself up into it. Once he was seated comfortably he conjured a simple desk across the arms of the chair, he placed the essay, his quill, and his inkpot down and began probing the magic on the parchment with his wand. The results of his diagnostic came back as expected, there were colour changing charms and a few others positively saturating the page. This diagnostic only told him which spells were present, not how they worked, why they worked, or what actions triggered which result.

Filius set his wand down. Hmm, how to proceed... he could simply continue marking the essay and see what happened? That sounded like a logical first step. He took up his quill and finished writing the second / of the X, this time it was a nice forest green. A delighted smile spread across his face, and he continued marking, he drew the occasional X but all told there were mostly check marks on the page so the student clearly understood the theory. He snorted, the sheer amount of magic embedded in the page made  _ that  _ abundantly clear. 

He was beginning to think the writing was just a decoy and the real ‘essay’ was the charms woven into the page. By the time he finished his marking he was left with a rainbow of coloured Xs and checks, and the essay itself looked to be written in sky blue ink on charcoal grey parchment. 

He was just about to reach for his wand to examine the charms more deeply when movement at the top of the page stopped him. He reread the first sentence, "Do you think he noticed yet?" 

That... wasn't the opening sentence of the essay.

The second sentence changed, one letter at a time, "We don't kno-" The words stopped changing, and suddenly it felt like they were looking at him. 

Tiny shaking letters formed from a small trail of colour that slipped away from the second sentence, "He's looking right at us!"

More tiny letters formed below the first sentence, "We know! What do we do!?"

The tiny letters below the second sentence stopped shaking and seemed to stare incredulously at the letters below the first one, "How the hell should we know!?"

"Hey! We're panicking over here! Have a bit of compassion!"

Filius chuckled at the silly little drama playing out on the page. The second the sound escaped his lips the letters froze and seemed to turn toward him. The first sentence changed to two little words, "Uh-Oh."

The second set of letters goggling at him changed to one word, "Alpha?"

The third sentence changed and grew pushing other the sentences away, "INITIATE ESCAPE PATTERN ALPHA! SCRAMBLE!"

Suddenly every letter on the page, the ones not in the third sentence at least, seemed to jump off the page and when they 'landed' again they had little squares around them and small numbers in the corner of each square. 

The letters in the third sentence deflated back to their original size, they seemed a bit sad and frustrated when they changed to, "No, we spelled scra-M-ble the M was very important."

The letters twisted from side to side as if to look at each other, then all at once the squares faded and every word on the page changed to variations of, "Oh, oops, sorry mates." 

"Right, what they spelled, we're sorry for misreading you guys, really."

"Yeah, now we feel silly."

Maybe it was his imagination but the third line seemed even more frustrated and more than a little exasperated when it changed once again, "He's still staring, and we're still here."

The feeling that the words were looking at him returned as every single one suddenly gained a great big pair of horrified looking googly eyes to gape at Filius before quickly changing to; 'AHHHHHH!' and bouncing around the page.

The other professors had long since abandoned their gossiping in favour of watching Filius until he noticed them. It was a game they sometimes played with each other, when one of them was thoroughly engrossed in something the others would stop and wait until they were noticed, if it went on long enough they would start placing bets or silently start doing outrageous things to get their colleague’s attention. 

Last year Minerva had transfigured a scale model of stonehenge, monolith by monolith, around Professor Babbling. Babbling had only looked up a moment before Minerva placed the last stone. The pictures of her surprised face hung in many of her colleague’s offices, carefully hidden away from the students.

Filius though, was something of a favorite. They were all very intelligent people and thoroughly enjoyed their fields of expertise, but Filius was so easily excited by the most unexpected things that the other Professors could expect him to be distracted at least once a week. 

The Professors watched as he laughed at a sheet of dark grey parchment, then he flipped it over and laughed harder. Bits of sky blue appeared to be bouncing erratically across the page. Septima opened her mouth to start the betting when Filius looked up and spoke, “This is a marvelous piece of magic, have any of you received something similar? From a first year.”

A bright smile exploded onto Aurora’s face, “Oh! You’ve gotten an essay from Mister Potter? He submitted one to me on the properties of bottled Starlight, it was delightful. We were covering it in class and he got his hands on some, I’m not sure what he did but I can read it in the dark and the letters twinkle.” 

As she spoke her rate of speech grew in tandem with her excitement, “I suspect he found a way to mix it into his ink, but there are other things he’s done with it as well. Like the page itself is always a pleasantly cool temperature and some of the letters twinkle in different colours. It’s almost like he found a way to bottle light from individual stars!”

Septima cocked her head to one side, “Isn’t that exceedingly difficult?”

“Oh yes, current techniques are well beyond his abilities. Which makes it all the more amazing, I suspect he’s using a simpler muggle technique to accomplish it.”

“What makes you think he didn’t buy some?” Asked Pamona.

The Astronomy professor looked back incredulously for a moment before remembering the older woman barely paid enough attention to the sky to know it was there, she said, more loudly than she intended, “It’s unfathomably expensive to buy starlight from an individual star, and for the most part it is also highly impractical seeing as you would almost never have any reason to use it.” She chuckled slightly, “Frankly if I thought he’d purchased it I would feel obligated to explain to him why he shouldn’t throw his money away to impress older women.”

Filius’ brow furrowed and he asked curiously, “You think he was trying to impress you?”

Aurora looked back with a raised eyebrow, and she gestured to the parchment in his hands, “You don’t?”

Filius looked at the boy’s parchment for a moment and thought, the letters had stopped bouncing around on the page and were now huddling together on the back of it, spelling things like, “Is he gone?” and “Don’t let your font size get too big! He’ll see us again!”

Filius hummed agreeably and said, “Truthfully? I think he was trying to entertain himself and decided to make a production out of it.”

The Deputy Headmistress decided to break into the conversation, “Since we’re on the topic of Mister Potter, do we know how he’s adjusting to the school? What does he think of the other students?”

Pomona started first, “My puffs seem to like him, apparently he’ll help with homework if they ask, he’s not the most approachable boy however. As for what he thinks of my puffs… he hasn’t said anything bad about them to my knowledge.”

Filius tried to recall if he’d heard anything from his ravens about the boy, “I… Hmm… Miss Li might have mentioned him once, now what did she say? I believe she called him polite and respectful but distant, like he was focused on something else but didn’t want to appear rude.” His brow furrowed again and he muttered, “Which is more than I can say for most of my ravens.”

Minerva added her impressions to the mix, “Surprisingly my Gryffindors don’t seem to have much of an opinion of him, excepting Miss Granger of course. She seems to take his obvious intelligence and lack of focus on coursework as a personal slight, I believe her last complaint was, ‘He’s clearly one of the most intelligent people in our entire year, why doesn’t he put in the work to show it?’” 

After hearing three of the four house heads give their take on Harry Potter all eyes turned to Severus.

“Mister Potter considers the students of Slytherin house to be utterly contemptible little twats who wouldn’t know proper cunning if it convinced a Gryffindor to hex them in the bits.” Severus muttered just loudly enough to be heard.

The look on Minerva’s face oscillated between confused to almost outraged to nearly laughing. The rest of the Professors had no need to be confused or outraged, though whether their laughter was caused by Severus’ comment or Minerva’s face was anyone’s guess.

It took her a long moment before she managed to regain enough control of her face to make words, but she did and was the one who spoke next, “Isn’t Mister Potter a  _ member _ of Slytherin house?”

Severus crossed his arms and his mouth contorted into a disgruntled scowl, “Yes, and I wouldn’t be as annoyed with him if he wasn’t right. Too many of the students in my house think they’re old enough to play politics, their hamfisted and childish attempts at it drive me to distraction.” 

A disgusted expression stole across his face and the other professors could hear a sneer in his voice when he spoke, “I’ve had to explain to Mister Malfoy three times,  _ three! _ That blackmail is in fact, very much illegal. And worse, trying to blackmail older students,  _ inside the Slytherin common room,  _ is a particularly stupid way to ask for a visit to the hospital wing.” 

His voice changed into a high pitched whine, “But Godfather! I’m a  _ Malfoy! _ And they’re not showing me proper respect!”

The other Professors guffawed at his all too accurate impression of the little blonde boy. 

A heavy sigh exploded from his lungs as he rubbed at his brow, “At least Misses Greengrass and Davis aren’t that bad. The worst they’ve managed to do is look mildly constipated from glaring at the other students, the rest of my first years may be beyond help.”

Aurora’s bright laughter filled the room, “Is that what they were doing? I sent them to Poppy last week because I thought they’d gotten stomach aches or cramps or something.” 

Talk quickly moved to other students and then to other topics, but by the end of the little meeting everyone was sure of one thing, Harry Potter was a Cunning Little Bastard.


	2. Chapter 2 - Pretty Pictures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a short chapter involving Harry and Hermione, I wanted it to be longer but I couldn't think of much to add.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN - I forgot that there is supposed to be a disclaimer on these things, don’t mind me, I’m just a little bit brain dead, I have no affiliation with anyone or anything that owns the Harry Potter Franchise.  
> And I should have made this more clear, I meant to say that Harry managed to make the letters change and move using only colour changing charms, meaning that sections of the parchment were changing colour rather than having the ink move around on the page. It really doesn’t matter, I just wanted to make that distinction and forgot to do it in the chapter. Lol.  
> I might have gone a bit Lemony Snicket with the narration… oops?

Chapter 2 Rough Draft - Pretty Pictures

Harry Potter sat alone in the library, ostensibly working on his latest essay. If one paid close enough attention, however, one might notice the mixture of long sweeping motions and short straight strokes he made with his quill were not the proper motions to form letters. If one was particularly good at making assumptions one might, accurately, assume he was sketching something. If one continued paying attention then one might notice how he would, on occasion, glance around the room. Now, one would have no way of knowing  _ why  _ his eyes would dart back and forth but in the interests of allowing the reader to follow along I shall explain, he occasionally searched the area, not to ensure he was alone, but rather to ensure the subject of his sketches had not moved.

Now one might assume he was sketching some _ one _ , one would be completely and utterly wrong, but it is an understandable assumption, no he was sketching some _ thing _ . Why would he need to ensure that this particular something remained imobile? Well, when one lives in a magical castle one must accept that sometimes things moved around a bit. And because he was new to the castle he could not be sure whether this was one of those things that moved or one of those that didn’t.

What was the  _ thing _ he was sketching you ask? At the risk of boring you utterly I shall tell you, it was a wall. Yes, a wall. A simple structure, in this case, of stone construction, large grey bricks held together with a bit of mortar to be exact. Now, I could go on about the exact composition of both the stone and the mortar but I fear that will not make his drawing any more interesting. Perhaps then, dear reader, it would interest you to know about what happened as he finished his artistic rendition?

Harry Potter sat alone in the library, ostensibly working on his latest essay. In reality he had just finished adding the final touches to a sketch, a sketch of a wall, overlaid on the wall was a tall oval revealing a room beyond. He cast a spell to dry the ink and lifted the parchment to compare it against his subject, it looked accurate enough, he thought. Satisfied with his work he brought the parchment back down and was startled to see a very annoyed looking brunette staring at him.

“Hello Miss Granger, is there something I can hel-” That set her off, he knew better than to use the ‘H’ word. He did it anyway because it annoyed her.

“I don’t need help! Least of all from you, Potter!” She snapped at him. “I want to know why the professors always talk about your essays as though they’re the best thing ever, when I spend hours on mine and they complain about them!”

Harry pulled a large bottle of ink from his bag, it twinkled brightly even in the light of the library. He responded as he set about preparing his writing tools, “I have no idea Miss Granger, I don’t even look at my essays after I get them back.”

That was the wrong thing to say, “YOU DON’T EVEN LOOK!?” She was really testing the limits of the sound suppression abilities of the desks, “How could you not- Do you not-” she trailed off into an incoherent scream of frustration. Harry brought his free hand up to cover his mouth, he hoped he looked like he was thinking rather than hiding a smile.

With his hand still holding the quill he flipped the sheet over and began making a grid, in regular ink, careful not to cross into the section covered by the oval. He made several attempts to hide his smile before he cleared his throat and said, “Miss Granger? We are still in the library, perhaps you should calm down? Or just not yell so loudly?”

Her mouth snapped shut and her hands flew up to cover her mouth as she started looking around frantically. After several moments of searching around she lowered her hands slowly, she asked, “How haven’t I been kicked out of the library by now?”

“There’s an area around every desk that dampens sound,” he responded distractedly as he searched his robe for his fountain pen, “I figured it out after looking at a desk where several students were arguing and I couldn’t hear them. There it is!” He reached into one of his many inner pockets and fished out his pen.

“Oh.” she said lamely. Then she narrowed her eyes at him, “Then why did you tell me to stop yelling? And why does your robe have pockets inside?”

He smiled brightly and stood up while flipping open one side of his robe, revealing a shiny black material inside, it came down to his waist like a vest. He exclaimed, “It’s a robe liner!” 

With his hand not holding open his robe he pointed at the edge of his robe using the nib of his fountain pen, he explained excitedly, “You put it on first and then throw on your robe, it attaches to the inside. Mine just has pockets, but they’re very enchantable or at least I think they are.”

“You think they are?” she asked skeptically. Then her eyes narrowed again, “You still haven’t answered my question.”

Harry closed his robe and sat down, he said, “Well yeah, I don’t know anything about the enchantability of fabric.” 

At her impatient glare he smiled and said, “Your screeching was hurting my ears and yelling in a library is a bad habit to get into. Happy?” 

A sour expression stole over her face and she crossed her arms, he joked, “Apparently not.” 

Hermione’s face contorted into a scowl and she looked like she was about to start yelling again but she stopped herself at the last minute. He smiled brightly at her and returned to his work. He opened his pen and carefully poured some of the sparkling ink into it. 

As he was about to start writing he looked up at Hermione then took a long look at the seat next to him and looked back at her. 

She continued scowling at him.

He tilted his head.

She glared back.

He pouted.

Her glare faltered.

His lower lip began quivering and he made sniffling noises.

She huffed and made her way around the desk to the open seat.

He smiled.

She dropped herself into the chair while opening her bag and pulled out her essay to go over, all the while grumbling about stupid annoying boys. Harry meanwhile, took his fountain pen and started scribbling inside the rough grid squares on the back of his drawing.

As she unrolled her essay Harry idly commented, “Your parents must spend a fortune on parchment Miss Granger.”

She looked back at her essay, it was only… a roll was three feet by one foot and she’d used one and a bit… so it was only four feet long, how much was it per roll? She remembered her parents looking at each other and exchanging grimaces at the bookshop, then she recalled thinking her current stock wouldn’t last the semester… and suddenly she was overcome with an incredible need to find a spell for erasing dried ink.

Harry Potter stood up from the desk as Hermione Granger was panicking over the cost of parchment, she grabbed his hand and asked, a bit hysterically, “Do you know a spell to get rid of dried ink?”

Startled he said, “No, why?”

Her response was nearly unintelligible, something about using all her parchment. He looked at her incredulously and said, “Then why not use less of it?”

She stopped freaking out and looked at him like he’d grown a second head, “Then how will the professors know that I understand the work they’ve assigned?”

His hand slipped from her grasp as he backtracked away from the desk, he said, “There are a number of ways to demonstrate your understanding, Miss Granger.”

“Like what?” she asked, following as he walked backwards into the wall.

He had his hand behind his back as he spoke, “You’re a smart girl, I’m sure you can think of something.”

Her response was cut off as a tall blue ringed oval spun into existence behind him, over his shoulder she could make out classroom furniture. He looked at her and smiling confidently, stepped backwards through the oval, he said, “Until we meet again Miss Granger.”

As the portal disappeared a sheet of parchment fluttered to the ground. On it was a picture. A hand drawn picture of a solid stone wall.

Extra scene

Hermione stood looking at the wall for a long time, thinking,  _ Did he really just say ‘Until we meet again?’ We have at least three classes together every week.  _ She groaned,  _ God help me, he’s the only person I’ve had a meaningful conversation with and he’s nearly as cheesy as dad.  _

Eventually she knelt down and picked up the parchment he’d drawn on. She flipped it over to look at what he’d scribbled on the back, it was blank. She moved back to the desk, ruminating on the value of eschewing friends all together when she looked up to see Potter running back into the library headed straight for the desk they’d shared. 

He stopped on the other side and smiled sheepishly. She turned a distinctly unimpressed stare on him, he rubbed at the back of his neck and blushed. He mumbled something. In a tone matching her look Hermione said, “I’m sorry what was that?”

He cleared his throat quietly and said, his embarrassed smile still firmly in place, “I forgot my stuff.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ENDING AN - As of this moment this story doesn’t have a plot. Or to be more accurate, I haven’t come up with one, so this won’t be updated very often unless I can come up with a plot or I come up with a random idea that I think can make into something fun.  
> I don’t think this one is as funny as chapter one, I’m hoping to make chapter three better.   
> Random note, Parchment is specially prepared animal hide, usually sheep, and the finest quality parchment is actually made from stillborn animals. This is because animals will, over the course of their lives, get cuts and abrasions, thus leaving blemishes on the parchment. Also it’s expensive as all hell (something like 75 USD per square foot circa 2020) and there’s like one manufacturer in the entire world.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About 1500 words, a scene some time after (let's say a week) the last one. I am sorry about taking so long to finish 1500 words, 1489 including the chapter heading, but this story doesn't have a plot so I don't really have a guideline to know what events to set up or how to pace anything, that said I do have a few jokes that I plan to make so I have some idea of what I need to set up... eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN - The end of the last chapter was labeled as an extra scene because I wasn’t sure how I wanted it to end. That said, I’m going to continue from there rather than the more dramatic ending because this is supposed to be silly and fun! And so help me Jebus it will be! 
> 
> The narrative style for the intro changed again, I might make this into a running gag, who knows? Oh, and um, fair warning, this chapter got away from me a bit. And by a bit I mean a lot.
> 
> Oh and I forgot that there is supposed to be a disclaimer on these things, don’t mind me, I’m just a little bit brain dead, I have zero affiliation with anyone or anything that owns the rights to the Harry Potter Franchise

Chapter 3 - RUE!

“Your whole mysterious-and-all-knowing thing falls flat after watching you run back into the library to grab your bag.” The Gryffindor girl said to the Slytherin boy.

“Who said it was for your benefit, Miss Granger?” The boy retorted, mysterious-and-all-knowing...ly.

“I never said it was, Mister Potter. I just don’t see why you keep it up when I know you’re just as much of a clueless doofus as any other boy.” The girl responded with a smirk.

“Oi! Watch where you’re pointing words like that, put a hole right through my heart you will.” The boy said as he put his hand on his chest.

“Oi! Watch where you’re being an idiot, put a hole right through my brain you will.” The girl snarked back.

The boy beamed at her and said sweetly, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you know.”

The smirk immediately dropped from the girl’s face, she narrowed her eyes at the boy and growled, “Is that so?”

The bright smile on the boy’s face remained firmly in place as he asked, “If I say it ain’t would that make you feel better?”

The girl’s glare broke and her lips twitched, she fought valiantly against the traitorous smile attempting to claim her face, but in the end the cruel and unrelenting forces of mirth bested our brave heroine, she laughed, “You are such a doofus.”

With a theatrical gasp he cried, “Madam! Your cruel and callous disregard for my emotional wellbeing cuts me to the bone!”

Hermione shook her head, choosing to ignore the ridiculous mutterings of the nutter nearby and returned to reading the research paper she’d found. It was on Analytic and algebraic topology of locally Euclidean metrization of infinitely differentiable Riemannian manifolds. She thought it sounded like a good place to start in solving her parchment troubles, there was only one tiny little problem, not even a problem, really, more of a… _wrinkle_. 

It was gibberish. 

Complete and utter _gibberish_.

Her understanding of advanced mathematics admittedly needed some work, but that didn’t matter because she hadn’t even made it through the index yet! It wasn’t that it was complicated, it was just… It read like a telephone directory, in _Russian_. The paper, more of a book really, was written by someone named Tom, unfortunately the last name couldn’t be made out, it was a Riddle hidden under Lehrers- er, layers, of smudged ink and dust. 

With one last frustrated look at the word Lobachevsky ( _whatever the heck that is_ ) she finally gave up and slammed the cover closed with an annoyed sigh. She was forced to admit she hadn’t learned anything, an especially disheartening experience considering how many other books had similarly failed to help her find a solution to her issues. She’d covered everything from duplication charms to enlargement and shrinking spells. She discarded all of them because their effects were either temporary or, in an especially annoying case, they couldn’t actually remove dried ink. So after numerous dead ends she’d shifted her focus.

That left her with one last idea, if she couldn't make more parchment then she would try to make the parchment she had do more. Her first idea was to look for a way to enchant parchment to hold more words, her initial method of enlarging the page and writing on it wasn’t working very well. It would seem her essays were a bit difficult to read after the parchment shrank back down, and the professors made sure to tell her as much. Apparently Professor Snape hadn’t seen so much ink on one page since the Headmaster forced him to do a Rorschach test. 

Interestingly both papers inspired identical responses. 

That bit of uncomfortable information regarding horribly misused psychological tests aside, the professors were right, plus it was getting really hard to spell check those tiny letters. 

She looked between the book she’d been reading and the charms section of the library, debating on whether or not to search out another book. With a heavy sigh she decided to call an end to her research for the day, as much as she loved books she had to admit there was such a thing as too much of a good thing. 

After coming to such a painful decision she needed something to make her feel better, she looked over at Potter, (Never Harry, he was the enemy after all, not because of his house, that was pointless and silly. No, he was the enemy because he was clearly intelligent but couldn’t be bothered to try, and for that she would make him rue the day he was born!) he was messing about with something that looked distinctly muggle. 

“Mister Potter,” she started, staring at the metal tube in his hand, “what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing, Miss Granger?”he replied absently, not looking away from his project.

With the way he was pulling on the eyepiece… She said, “It looks like you’re about to do something heinous to that poor innocent telescope, Mister Potter.”

Potter looked up at her, then back down to the telescope, then back at her completely aghast and exclaimed, “Hein-?! Miss Granger! I’m eleven!” his eyes flicked to his lap and he mumbled, “Besides, this one is much too large to be used like that,”

Hermione squinted at him and pursed her lips, she had no idea what he was talking about, the telescope was tiny, hardly larger than her arm, what it could possibly be too large for she couldn’t even guess, but she was now completely convinced that she needed to save that unfortunate piece of optical equipment from Potter’s evil ( _He’s not evil because he’s a Slytherin, he’s evil because the professors like him more than me! He must be using some kind of Mag- Oh… Right…)_ scheme… whatever it was. 

_Alright Hermione, Step one on the road to foiling evil plots; Gather information,_ “Well then Mister Potter, what _are_ you doing with that telescope?” _Perfect, step one accomplished._

Without so much as glancing up he said, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

 _Step T- Hold on what? Yes I would like to know, that’s why I asked, you little dink! OK, calm down, try something else, how about…_ “I could help you, if I knew what you were doing.” _Ha! That’s even better than my previous plan! Nobody says no when_ **_I_ ** _offer to help!_

Potter stopped unscrewing the eye piece and looked up at her… and immediately went back to work, he said mildly, “I doubt it.”

“Great! I-” Time stopped as her thought process ground to a halt faster than a child lured into her parents office under false pretenses. _Mommy I thought you said there would be ice cream? No Tommy, I said you’d need ice and medicated cream when the dentists were through with you._

She stared vacantly at him as her mind struggled to come back from the hard reset. Slowly the lights started coming back on, the first thing she became aware of a vague feeling of anger, as more of her higher brain function returned the anger became sharper, more _focused_. When she finally regained the ability to form coherent thoughts she was… not happy. 

_What did he just say to me?! Oh, now I’m not going to settle for the day he was born, oooooh no, no, I’m going to make him_ ** _rue_** **_every second of HIS ENTIRE EXISTENCE_** _! I’m going to start by doing whatever he’s doing only_ ** _better_** _! Yes… Yes, Then he’ll see that I’m better than him and then when he breaks down and begs for my help, with tears in his eyes, I’ll refuse! AND HE. WILL._ ** _RUE_** _!!!_

“Are you alright?” Potter ( _No not Potter, I must refer to him by some witty but humiliating name, like- like- hmm… Potto? No that’s lame. Potta? Nope, can’t tell the difference. Puta? Um, no, definitely not that one. Aha! Like Potty!)_ asked as he leaned away, “You look a bit, um, deranged.”

“I’m not deranged! You’re deranged!” she cried in a thoroughly ( _Not!)_ deranged manner.

“I’ll, uh, take your word for it, Miss Granger.” He _(Potty)_ said placatingly.

 _Ha! He already knows that I know better than him! Step… um, three! In my plan to ruin his evil scheme accomplished._ She said in a low maniacal growl, “Yes, you will, won’t you?” 

Hearing her address him in that tone set every alarm bell in his head screaming bloody murder, it was at this point he decided to tactfully withdraw. He stood from his seat and said shakily, “W-well, Miss Granger I’ve, uh, accomplished everything I planned to today so I’ll just, um-”

“You’ll just what?” She demanded in the same spine chilling tone, “We’re not finished yet.”

Suddenly his mental alarm bells fell silent, it wasn’t a relief. 

They stopped because it was too late.

His terrified screams echoed long into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just an FYI it was a dick joke, not a butt joke. Though it might be funnier as a butt joke. I was torn between what I wrote and “It’s not going anywhere near my Heinous!” Yeah… I think I took that joke a bit far as it is lol.
> 
> If you were wondering, the inspiration for this story is fairly simple, I got really tired of the sheer number of stories where Harry is in Slytherin and literally from the moment he walks into the common room his life is in danger or he has to become some kind of political uber prodigy inside a week. Basically I was tired of reading about adults going to high school (Still am as a matter of fact). To say nothing of the whole ‘To be in Slytherin makes you better than everyone else’ trope… just ugh. 
> 
> My point is if I’m going to write a child character with adult level critical thinking skills then they’re going to use them for their own amusement just as I use them for my own amusement! …that sounds absolutely horrible doesn’t it?
> 
> One last thing! This sentence is probably funnier than anything I will ever write, Blue Oyster Cult wrote a song about the Florida Man meme, I laughed until I cried. I listened, I laughed more. It is glorious.

**Author's Note:**

> Sadly I can't be sure of anything resembling an update schedule, I'm sure I'll work on it but I have no idea when I'll have another chapter to publish.  
> Feel free to comment/review, I'll probably read them, though I can't be sure if I'll respond.


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